Picture Us In The Light Read online

  “We’ll go to dinner to celebrate when your mother gets home. We’ll surprise her.”

  My dad has always loved surprises. Once, the summer I was eleven, he woke me up in the middle of the night and brought me, groggy, into the garage. On top of his car there was a telltale white paper sack, and he pointed to it.

  “I went to Donut Wheel,” he said. “A bribe for you for after.”

  “Um, for after—”

  “Daniel.” He looked very serious. “On Saturday is Robin Cheung’s wedding.”

  My parents had been taking a ballroom dance class at the rec center for a few years; it was my mom’s favorite hobby. (Weird, but: she also, every Summer Olympics, arranges her sleep schedule around the rhythmic gymnastics.) Their friends’ son was getting married and my mom had at one point expressed a shy desire to show off the fox-trot they were learning at the wedding, but my dad, apparently, was having trouble with the moves.

  “So fast,” he complained. The naked light bulb swayed overhead, throwing his shadow self across the bare wooden walls. I was barefoot and in my pajamas. “The tango I can do, the cha-cha, but this one—too fast.”

  “Um, so you want me to—”

  “I bought you donuts,” he said quickly, seeing the look on my face. “What else do you want me to buy? I’ll buy you new pens. Do you want new pens? I’ll buy you whatever you want. And I won’t tell your friends. I promise.”

  I am easily bought. I spent all night out there with him, my elbow resting on his and our hands interlaced as he led me around and around the concrete, his jaw tight with concentration. That weekend at the wedding—it was in the banquet hall at Dynasty, steamed bass and lobster noodles and pink neon uplights that made the lines of everyone’s faces look dramatic and sharp—I could see him tapping his fingers impatiently all through the dinner, all through the toasts. When the music started, he leapt up and held out a hand to my mom. I watched them on the dance floor, holding my breath, waiting to see if he’d pull it off. He did. Afterward she was beaming and out of breath, and they went to the open bar and came back with Manhattans for them and a Coke for me and they excitedly recapped all their steps, complimenting each other on their technique and form. I won’t lie: it was pretty damn cute. I want them to be that way—that sparkling, that effervescent—all the time.

  “She will be so happy, Daniel,” he says now. “Can you imagine?” He pats his pocket for his phone. “Should we video her when you tell her?”

  “Um—no?”

  “She might never be so happy again. Maybe we’ll want it to look at later to remember.”

  “That’s so fatalistic, Ba.” I get up and follow him out to the living room. “You want me to cook something for dinner instead? I think there’s pork chops in the freezer.” The one thing I can make: turn on pan, drop meat, cook.

  He brushes it away. “No, no, tonight we’ll celebrate. When she gets home.”

  My mom takes care of twin six-year-olds and a four-year-old for a family named the Lis up in the hills vaguely by where Harry lives. We wait for her on the couch. Usually my dad watches mostly news, scanning the screen like he can ward off disaster by watching it happen to other people, but today Planet Earth is on instead.

  I grab a blanket from the armchair and wrap myself in it like a burrito. It’s been cold these days, and freezing, always freezing in the house, because my parents refuse to turn the heat on. I wear three layers to bed. Last year, when I drew a portrait of my mom, I made one of her eyes the thermostat, turned down all the way to fifty-five. I pull my blanket tighter and let myself imagine living in a (warm, heated) RISD dorm next year. Of all the people who applied, so many people who’ve probably been practicing their craft all their lives—they chose me.

  My dad keeps glancing at the clock, and I can feel him getting restless as it traipses toward six-fifteen. It’s a minor emergency to both my parents whenever the other is late getting home, and I know my dad will take his phone from his pocket and tap his fingers against it, ready to call to check on her, right at six-sixteen.

  “They were doing roadwork on Rainbow,” I say.

  “Hm?”

  I motion toward his phone. “If she’s late. That’s probably why.”

  “Oh. Yes.” But he doesn’t look any more relaxed. Then, at six-fourteen, we hear the garage door open, and my dad jumps up, his face lighting up again. “Where’s your letter?”

  “It’s on the table.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  He’s still patting the couch cushions looking for it when my mom comes in. He rises from the couch, smiling nervously, and then he whips out the phone—it was in his pocket after all—to record. “Anna—Daniel has news for you.”

  “News? You have news?” My mom drops her purse and her bags of groceries from Marina. I watch the way their handles go flat, like a dog’s ears when it’s listening. “You got in?” She clutches my sleeve. “Did you get in? Did you—”

  I flirt with the idea of pretending I didn’t, of trying to make her think it was bad news, but in the end I can’t hold back my grin. Her hands fly to her mouth, covering her smile, and her eyes fill with tears.

  “He did it!” my dad yells from behind his phone like we’re a hundred yards away, his voice bouncing back at us off the walls and hardwood floor. This video (which he’ll watch on loop; I know him) is going to be all over the place, jiggling and blurred. He makes me show off the letter and hug my mom while he’s filming. My mom cries.

  We go to Santa Clara for Korean barbecue, and I drive, because for whatever reason they always have me drive when we’re together. It’s not far, fifteen minutes, but you always kind of feel it when you’re leaving Cupertino, a bubble piercing. Cupertino’s mostly residential neighborhoods and then strip malls with things like the kind of American-y diner that probably used to be big here back when it was all orchards and white people, or the Asian restaurants/bakeries/tutoring centers/passport services/et cetera. It’s also its own world—land of overachieving kids of tech titans, of badminton clubs and test-prep empires and restaurants jockeying for Yelp reviews and volunteer corps run by freshmen who both care about the world but also care about establishing a long-term commitment to a cause they can point to on their college apps. When we first moved here from Austin, I remember being weirded out by how Asian it was. And how everyone has money, too, but mostly in a more closet way than they do in Texas—here you can drop two million on a normal-looking three-bedroom house, so it’s not something you necessarily notice right away the way you notice it when someone has a giant mansion on Lake Austin. (Harry’s house is an exception—he has two sisters and both his grandfathers live with them, and all of them have their own bedroom and I think there are at least two other bedrooms no one’s using.) I don’t think anyone I know needs financial aid for college. I don’t think anyone I know even needs loans.

  It’s packed inside the restaurant, but a table opens up just as we’re coming in and my parents smile and smile like it’s some kind of miracle. Already I’m sad for when the joy of this wears off, becomes everyday. It hasn’t been like this with them in I don’t even know how long.

  The waitress comes and sets the laminated menus in front of us. My dad squares his shoulders and says, to my mom, “Now?” Over their menus, my parents exchange a long look. I say, “What?”

  They both ignore me. Then my mom gives a nearly imperceptible nod, and my dad says, “Daniel, we have something for you.”

  He pulls out a plastic Ranch 99 bag with something inside it. I saw him bring it in, but it didn’t register at the time. He hands it to me across the table. “Open it.”

  “It’s for good luck,” my mom says. They’ve taped the bag shut. My family’s not the wrapping-paper type.

  Inside it’s a sweatshirt, the expensive embroidered kind, that says RISD. They forgot to take the price tag off. It cost nearly seventy dollars.

  “Try it on,” my dad says, beaming, so I shove my seat back far enough that I can shrug into
the sweatshirt. It has that new look, the creases still showing where it was folded, and it’s at least two sizes too big—for whatever reason both my parents think bigger clothes are practical, maybe because you get more fabric for your money or something—and just enthusiastic enough to look dorky. That, or dickish, like I’m the kind of guy who’s going to work it into conversation every chance he gets that I’m going to my first-choice art school. My dad says, “What do you think?”

  They must have bought this when I applied, must have had it waiting all along. I feel my eyes filling.

  “It’s great,” I say, and put on the biggest smile I can muster. I try to keep that image of the tape on the bag, those creases like he’s been clutching it close, to draw later on. “Wow. Thanks. I love it.”

  “Good.” My dad meets my mom’s eyes and smiles. “This is so big, Daniel. This is—” His voice breaks, and he swipes at his eyes. “This is everything we wanted.”

  “You will have the future we hoped for,” my mom says. Her eyes are shining at me.

  My dad unfolds his napkin into his lap, then smooths it out on the table and refolds it. It looks lumpy and inexact. He glances up at us, like he’s going to say something. My mom’s eyes are still glittering, but it suspends a little as she looks at him, leaves open space for something like alarm to flash across her face. “What is it?”

  He draws a long breath. He looks back and forth between us and starts to speak, but then he stops himself, covering it with a smile. “Nothing. It can wait.”

  I say, “No, what was it?”

  “Another time.” He raises his glass of water. “To Daniel. Our beloved son.”

  “To Daniel,” my mom echoes after a second or two, and they clink their glasses against mine.

  After that we spend nearly ten minutes settling on our order, and I keep the sweatshirt on until my mom fusses in this proud way and tells me I should take it off, that I don’t want to spill anything on it. The waitress hovers by our table, impatient, and I give her an apologetic smile, but I’m not actually sorry. Because these are the best kind of moments: all of us plotting what we’ll eat, that comfort you can slip into with the people who know you best, who love you with a fierceness you’ll probably never understand.

  I’m lucky. I’ve always been.

  I wake up early to get ready for the Journalism field trip to San Francisco that Regina’s making us all go on, and there’s a note on the kitchen table, my mom’s loopy lettering scrawled on the back of a junk mail envelope saying my parents went to Costco. They always come back weekend mornings laden with cardboard flats of frozen chicken breasts and dumplings and greens.

  I’m low on cash, like always, so I should bring something to the city in case I get hungry. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing packs of beef jerky in the hall closet, and so I go to look. When I open the closet door, a barely contained twelve-pack of Costco paper towels tumbles out. My parents—I’ll just put this out there—are like one Great Depression away from being full-on hoarders. They keep everything. They’ve always been too Asian to throw away things like plastic bags, but they also keep stuff like expired coupons just in case, plastic utensils and packets of condiments that come with fast food, single socks where the other one’s missing.

  I start to put the paper towels back. Behind where they were stuffed is this medium-size box labeled with just my dad’s name. And something about the careful, centered way my dad’s name is lettered on, like someone took the time to do it, and also the way the box is jammed in the closet like it’s supposed to be out of sight, catch my attention. I pull it out to look at.

  It’s taped, and I peel the tape up gently so none of the box comes off with it. Inside there’s a little stuffed bear I used to play with that I haven’t seen in years. My dad gave him to me when we moved to California, and I named him Zhu Zhu, which at the time I thought was hilarious, a bear named Pig. I hold him a moment, finger his synthetic fur, and get that rush of nostalgia, your memories compressed into some intangible feeling mixed with the searing longing you get for a time that’s lost to you now. For a long time after I outgrew Zhu Zhu, my dad kept him on his pillow. I’m kind of touched my dad saved him.

  Zhu Zhu was resting on the type of piles of clutter that steadily collect everywhere on our counters and in our drawers: a few old carbon copies of checks made out to people I haven’t heard of and a handful of what look like some kind of loan documents, a sleeve of pictures that must be from China—some roads and scenes from a car trip, a high-rise apartment building, a pharmacy—and two small unsigned watercolors, good but not quite professional, one of a dark blue bird and one of a multicolored dragon, not at all the kind of art I’ve ever known my dad to collect. I flip the dragon one over to see if there’s anything on the back, but it’s blank. Underneath all that is a bulging file in a yellowed rubber band labeled, in my dad’s handwriting, Ballards. When I slide off the rubber band, a news clipping flutters out onto my desk. It’s a real estate article about a house for sale in Atherton, which is where all the venture capitalists live, thirty or so minutes north of here.

  I try to lay everything out on my desk, but there are too many papers, and that’s where things get—weird. Nearly everything is about a guy named Clay Ballard. There are a few dozen pictures printed off what looks like a Google Images search: some headshots, him at some kind of awards banquet or something shaking hands with a balding man in a suit, a picture of him and his wife at some kind of gala. He looks like a generic white dad—mostly trim, straight white teeth, kind of weathered-looking like maybe he plays a lot of golf. There are all kinds of printouts of public records and also ones that I think you’d actually have to, like, go to some kind of city office to get—a marriage license, copies of a sale of a home in Atherton, a six-bedroom mansion with a wine cellar and a guesthouse that sold for seven million dollars. Toward the bottom there are a few printouts on Sheila Ballard, who I assume must be his wife.

  I’ve never seen either of them or heard their names come up once. I don’t know what to make of it. They aren’t anyone from UT or either of the labs at San José State that my dad worked with, and the sheer volume of it all, the obsessive detail, is staggering.

  In the bottom of the box there are a bunch of letters in Chinese. For all the years of Chinese school I sat through on Saturdays as a kid (and despite the fact that my parents hardly speak English at home), I still can barely read Chinese worth crap, and it isn’t until I paw through them, and then in one of them there’s a drawing—a child, a grubby fist grabbing a rice paddle—that I realize these must be letters from my grandfather, that probably those watercolors were his too, and this drawing is my sister. I go cold and then hot all over all in a split second, and my heart stutters against my chest. It feels like meeting ghosts.

  I’m an only child now, and thought I was one for a long time, but I was supposed to have a sister. Did have a sister, actually, who came and then died before me, a sister who exists now in her absence. I know almost nothing about her except the very fact of her.

  I’ve spoken with my parents about this exactly once. When we moved here in kindergarten, I found drawings of her lodged in one of my parents’ old books and brought it to my mom to ask who it was. My mom was in her garden, her garden gloves pulled over her sleeves and her face shielded by her giant plastic visor, when I brought the pictures out to her.

  “Who drew these?” I asked.

  She froze for a moment and grabbed the papers, the color pooling like watercolor in her cheeks. Her mouth worked without sound. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the garage.”

  She closed her eyes. Her lips were trembling. “It’s—that was not for you to find.”

  “Did you draw them?”

  “No. Your grandfather.”

  I’d never known that any of my relatives liked to draw, too. My parents never brought it up. I’d wished they had. “Who is it? It’s not me, right?”

  “Another baby.”

 
“Another—your baby?”

  She nodded.

  “And Ba’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I have a brother? Or—”

  “No. Sister. Dead.”

  All my life I’d been an only child, and in that moment the person I’d been disappeared. The world tilted around me. “When?”

  “In Wuhan.” She opened her eyes without looking at me. “Before you.”

  She didn’t mean to tell me, and if I hadn’t caught her so completely off guard, I don’t think she ever would have. Maybe if she’d had more time she would’ve come up with a better story. She could have told me the baby was her, or my dad, or a friend. I would’ve believed her.

  That was the first time I ever saw her have a panic attack: there in front of me she went clammy and pale, and she rocked forward and dropped her trowel and clutched her chest. I thought she would die. I thought it was my fault.

  Afterward she felt bad about it, I think—she was brusque in that way she gets when you make too much of a fuss over her, and she told me not to tell my dad any of it. I didn’t. And I never brought up my sister again.

  I’ve never stopped thinking about her, though. The question that most consumed me at first—still does a lot of the time—was what happened. Every time I heard sirens I thought about her, imagining her falling from an open window or getting struck by a car. When I learned to swim, I wondered if she’d drowned. In AP Bio this fall we studied genetic diseases and I spent the whole unit low-key worrying that my parents couldn’t bring themselves to tell me that I too had whatever degenerative and fatal disease had killed my sister. Whenever I see headlines of kidnappings or child abuse I wonder if she was old enough to realize what was happening to her, whatever it was.

  And I wonder about the rest of it, too. I wonder where it happened. I wonder if they held her body. I wonder when she was born and how much older than me she would’ve been. I wonder what her name was. When we moved to California, my parents changed our last name from Tseng to Cheng because it was easier for Americans to pronounce (I still remember my mom’s tight smile every time white people mangled Tseng, the same way she reacted once when some of the other kids spoke nonsense syllables at me pretending it was Chinese or when people spoke loudly and slowly to her like she was a child), and I think about that sometimes now, bubbling in my name on Scantrons or typing it for college forms—how my sister died with a name the rest of us gave up. Sometimes I imagine her older, nine or ten or fifteen or twenty or however old she’d be now. And I imagine her filling all the air in every room of the house.